National Academies of Science - Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education

Committee on Human Factors

MEMORANDUM

To: Doug Bauer, Director for Counter-Terrorism Coordination

From: National Research Council
  Committee on Human Factors, Raja Parasuraman, Chair and Anne Mavor, Director

Re: Human Factors and Technology for Countering Terrorism

Committee on Human Factors and the human factors community can make important contributions to the Academies’ science and technology program for responding to terrorist threats. We have reviewed the overall task statement for the Committee on Science and Technology for Countering Terrorism and have identified a number of ways in which human factors intersects with the subpanel topics. We have also identified experts to be considered of the various panels and they are identified at the end of this memorandum.

Many of the S & T responses to terrorism, as well as the systems to which they apply and which must be protected against threats (e.g., air transportation, energy infrastructure), involve human operators "in the loop." Whenever people interact with machines or organizations to fulfill a mission, this interaction is crucial to mission success. A systems approach must be taken to ensure that these interactions are achieved with a minimum of error. Taking a total systems approach to understanding vulnerabilities or deployment implications of S & T countermeasures will necessitate including the "human factor" in your deliberations. Human factors issues are critical to the effective deployment of countermeasures in all seven of the fast-track panels identified by your Committee.

Human factors is the study of humans and their interaction with systems, products, and the environment. Human factors is both a science of human performance as well as an engineering discipline concerned with the design of systems for both efficiency and safety. The purpose of human factors design activities is to match systems, jobs, products, and environments to the physical and cognitive abilities and limitations of people. The Committee on Human Factors stands ready as your conduit to our nation's expertise in such areas as human error, efficiency, safety, automation, biomechanics and anthropometry, signal detection and vigilance, perception, cognition, and decision making, performance under stress, personnel selection, training, and organizational behavior.

Below we provide a brief description of the human factors considerations in each subpanel area and offer suggestions for potential panel members.

Transportation

The efficiency and safety of the nation's transportation systems—in the air, on the road, at sea, and even in space—are critically important requirements for our nation. Understanding the limits and challenges of human performance; designing secure and efficient human-technology systems; developing training and simulation programs that enhance human performance in stressful and uncertain circumstances are several of the ways that human factors approaches can assist the Transportation fast-track panel in meeting its charge of “identifying significant barriers to the use of technology and knowledge that may be available or underutilized” in the fight against terrorism.

The operators of our transportation systems—pilots and air traffic controllers, car and truck drivers, mariners and sailors, and astronauts—must be provided with well-designed technologies that enhance rather than compromise safety. Human factors research has shown that catastrophic transportation accidents are often attributed to "human error," which can result from systems that are designed without taking human factors knowledge into account, insufficient training, or improper maintenance. Today’s transportation systems require secure and seamless integration of users, operators, technology, and systems, which magnifies the pathological impact of poorly designed technology and systems. New transportation technologies introduced without attention to human factors can have unintended and unanticipated consequences for human performance, and can produce technology-induced errors, often in ways that jeopardize safety and security.

As new anti-terrorism initiatives in the transportation domain are considered, from improved bomb-detection equipment at airports, face-recognition software at major transportation hubs, new surveillance systems for highways, to intelligent monitoring systems in our nation’s ports, it is vital that issues pertaining to the effective use of these technologies by human operators be considered. Human factors researchers at universities and at such institutions as NASA and the Department of Defense have the requisite expertise to define and examine the impact of these issues. For example, the impact of anti-terrorism initiatives on aircrews and controllers can be examined using computational human performance models, thereby offering the possibility of performing early tradeoff analyses in software rather than waiting until regulations have been implemented or hardware installed. By incorporating human factors into the design, development and insertion of new technologies, issues of usability, ease of implementation, procedures, scheduling, training, roles and responsibilities can be addressed as hardware capabilities are engineered and new regulations are crafted and approved.

Information Technology, Computers, and Telecommunications

The human element is pervasive in information technology and includes computer programmers, interface designers, end users, and even cyber-terrorists. The designers and users of information technologies are engaged in activities that depend upon the acquisition, manipulation, and dissemination of information, largely through the use of computers. Studies in human-computer interaction have demonstrated that there are dramatic consequences of design for each of these functions. Matching information tasks with human capabilities and developing those tasks within an appropriate social context are critical to successful information use.

Acquiring information is dependent on the way in which the data is displayed. Visualization techniques can reveal patterns or sequences of activities that are not obvious from standard numerical presentations. Displaying color-coded links of communication on a three-dimensional globe, for example, can reveal communication patterns that are otherwise extremely difficult to identify. The appropriate design of a computer monitor of “trouble” in a nuclear plant can make the difference between timely recognition and disaster.

How the interface tools are built can also have serious consequences for data manipulation. Controls need to be matched to the task. The ability to locate information depends on the ease with which large data-sets can be manipulated. In order for people to use computer databases for retrieving relevant information in a timely fashion, the information structures must fit with user’s expectations about the space. It is critical to make relevant information salient without producing information overload, and that requires substantial attention to the structure of information displays or other forms of communication. The way in which displays and functions interact has been shown to have life and death consequences in such diverse areas as aviation and medicine.

These issues are especially critical when the acquired information needs to be disseminated quickly and easily should a terrorist attack occur. Interface designers can suggest how best to structure information that will be disseminated through a wide number of devices, including computers, handheld devices, and mobile phones. The success in rapid communication will depend on the effective matching of information characteristics with ease of access and use.

Information systems require coordination and cooperation among individuals working in teams and other units where motivation and commitment to performing their own tasks and working supportively with others is essential.  Organizational psychologists can provide assistance in understanding the role of human motivation and the design of teams, authority structures and social units as they relate to effective information dissemination.

Biological and Chemical Threats

The threat of using biological or chemical weapons against the population requires a response by a system comprised of organizations, machines and people. Response to such threats involve, first detection, then decision, and finally action. All three of these functions have well-studied human factors implications.

Although chemical sensors are often highly automated, they have distinct limitations on threshold for detection, time interval before detection, and rejection of false alarms. People and organizations must respond on the basis of a sensor alarming. Effective detection raises issues of system performance, human trust of the sensor system, and speed of response. All have been studied by human factors researchers and engineers.

Aided by semi-automated information and communication systems, people within organizations must decide on the correct course of response action. Such decisions are often made with incomplete (and changing) information, under severe time pressure, and within an organizational context. Human decision making in similar situations, e.g. emergency response, has been the subject of extensive study. In particular, the roles of automation, planning and training/simulation have been investigated. Lastly, the domain of socio-technical systems engineering can contribute to the analysis of the functioning of individuals within purposive organizations,

Both organizations (such as emergency teams or law enforcement) and members of the public are involved in any response to a biological or chemical weapons threat. One relevant area of human factors expertise is emergency egress/evacuation from buildings or vehicles. A second area is the role of pre-defined procedures and rules for response. These can be captured in rule-based ("expert") systems and applied without immediate human intervention. However, such systems may not be sensitive to changing contexts, especially in evolving operations once a chemical attack has occurred. In such cases, human factors research has shown the value of including expert humans who can provide knowledge-based evaluations of the situations, thus enhancing the effectiveness of the response.

Protecting fixed physical facilities from terrorist activities involves many of the same issues as in transportation facilities. The major areas are prevention, surveillance, selecting and executing a response and emergency recovery procedures in the event that all else fails.

There are many interesting developments in sensor technology, pattern recognition capabilities, and automated response systems that are being considered for protection of facilities and infrastructure. Ultimately, however, it is human intervention that will be required to bring these technologies all together and make then work effectively and seamlessly together. Therefore it is better to introduce the concepts and principles of human-centered design from the beginning rather than to focus independently on technological solutions and later find that they are difficult to use, complicate the users’ tasks, or fail to accommodate alternative terrorist strategies. For example, in intelligence systems, machine vision techniques have been used to monitor satellite imagery seeking potential critical features. In such systems it has been found much more efficient to increase the probability of finding potential targets by having the automated surveillance seek localized candidate areas where such features are likely to exist and have human monitors scan these more limited areas for specific targets. When a surveillance system detects a potential threat, it is almost always a human operator who is responsible for determining what actions to take and those actions usually require a rapid response under significant stress and having very high costs of failures. Equally important is setting the criteria for when and when not to respond. Human factors professionals and related behavioral scientists have backgrounds and experience in designing robust systems involving such human decision making.

In addition to their role in analysis and design of systems, human factors professionals are experienced in issues of personnel selection, training and work motivation. Security of facilities is only as good as the quality, motivation and knowledge of the people assigned to monitor and control access. Good personnel selection involves the development of screening tests, interview protocols and background checks, processes in which human factors professionals are well grounded. Development of training systems and procedures that take advantage of the latest in training technology, such as virtual environments and simulation for mission rehearsal require thoughtful and professional analysis both of the training requirements, lesson plans and operational design in order to be effectively utilized. Motivational considerations in the design of the task and its placement in interpersonal and technical systems are critical for increasing the likelihood that skills and abilities will be effectively utilized at all times.

Once a terrorist act has occurred it is just as important to have a plan in place that provides for shut down, emergency evacuation, or what other actions might be required for the orderly devolution of the event. This again will necessarily involve the activities of people and the design of these procedures should have the benefit of professional human factors expertise. There are many current examples in which human factors recommendations have been made as a result of studies concerning emergency response, including emergency egress from buildings. This work has identified the optimal ways in which humans and technology can respond to various emergency conditions that may occur with different forms of attack in the future.

Behavioral, Social and Institutional Issues

The earlier sections have considered behavioral issues pertaining to the performance of individuals, groups, and organizations involved in prevention of terrorism. As argued previously, these human factors must be examined jointly with the development of technological countermeasures, and not be treated as a separate activity. At the same time, there are broader human and organizational issues that form the main charge of this last fast-track panel. These issues include: (1) understanding the organizational culture that produces attacks and responses, (2)examining cognitive organizational issues that influence the way a problem is stated, and (3) developing highly reliable organizations that can respond quickly to threats.

In addition to immediate defensive interventions to reduce the present risk of terrorism it is important to embark on along-term strategy that will lessen the motivation for engaging in it. The distribution of world resources varies widely from rich to poor countries, with technology monopolized by wealthy nations. Technology amplifies resource usage, with wealthy countries using a disproportionate fraction of the world's resources. Terrorism aimed at incapacitating advanced technology infrastructure can be interpreted as attempts to reduce resource disparity. Foreign aid to poorer countries to reduce these disparities should not underwrite the duplication of the present infrastructure but rather find judicious infrastructure modifications in both advanced and more primitive infrastructures to lessen present disparities, and simultaneously be sensitive to national and cultural differences in willingness and ability to adopt technology. Addressing these issues requires expertise and guidance from ethnographic, sociological, environmental and human factors and organizational perspectives. Human factors and organizational experts can contribute to understanding behavioral and social aspects of the design and use of technology.

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